Review:"Snow White and the Huntsman"

Release Date: June 1, 2012Rating: PG-13Running Time: 127 minutes

When it comes to butt-kicking Snow Whites, I’d rather ride into battle along Lilly Collin’s adventurous proto-feminist ofMirror Mirror rather than Kristen Stewart’s morose warrior princess of Snow White and the Huntsman. Granted, this year’s second revisionist take on the classic Brothers Grimm fairytale is moderately superior to the goofy Mirror Mirror, but it boasts the less desirable and inspiring of the two Snow Whites. In Snow White and the Huntsman, our heroine’s nothing more than a symbol of virtue and purity, a natural beauty who must be destroyed in order for Charlize Theron’s evil queen to remain forever young. Perhaps unhappy about being stuck in a sword-and-sorcery epic that blatantly panders to Twihards, the scowling Stewart makes no effort to make something out of an underwritten role. Stewart’s passive resistance ensures that sparks fail to fly between her and Thor’s Chris Hemsworth, who plays the huntsman sworn to protect Snow White. Whatever Snow White and the huntsman share, it doesn’t appear to be love, and that makes it hard to believe in the kiss that Hemsworth plants on Stewart to awaken her from her poisoned apple-induced coma. Bearing in mind Stewart’s lack of participation, even when Snow White discovers her inner Joan of Arc, it’s almost unfair to slam Theron for not knowing when to dial it back as Queen Ravenna. At times Theron’s as deviously seductive as director Rupert Sanders needs her to be, but when the Queen starts to age, Theron loses her composure and goes screamingly over the top. Coming from a TV commercials background, Sanders clearly doesn’t know how to draw effective performances from his leads. Luckily, old pros Bob Hoskins, Ian McShane, and Ray Winstone rank among the seven dwarfs who befriend Snow White, and they bring honor, courage, and some much-needed comic relief to this pitch-black proceedings. Sanders, though, is very much a master of creating an eerie sense of menace, conjuring visually arresting images, and concoctingLord of the Rings-tinged battles. Still, this is not enough to make this Snow White the fairest of them all.